Greatest Feature I Never Knew About

[chowanec]

Mint constantly has me wondering: 'Why hasn't Windows done that yet...?'

I just opened a folder to copy some MP3s off my server to my local HDD and when I moused over the MP3 file, it started playing. What a wonderful little feature...

Anyone have any other awesome tidbits I don't know about?

Thank you Mint. You complete me.

[iironjade]

I found by accident a few days ago and damn near scared myself to death!

[badmotor]

hahah...

*volume on full..... accidentally mouse over song....*

[rivenought]

I was pleasantly surprised to accidentally uncover this gem, as well. I now use it quite often.

[clem]

Thank Gnome for that, not Mint. This comes from upstream

[MALsPa]

Anyone have this feature working in Konqueror? Works when I mouse-over on .ogg files but not .wma or .mp3. Works for all three file types in Nautilus.

[belovedmonster]

This was announced, or maybe just rumoured, to be a new feature in the up coming Snow Leopard version of Apple's OSX. Oh man, the Linux fanboys came out in force to say how they had that feature for years and this was proof Linux was the all conquering masterpiece.

Personally my favourite file browser trick is exclusive to Macs at the moment. Quick Look:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MqjH0_E4pxQ

If anything, I don't understand why Apple never implemented audio along side the video and document viewing first time around.

Anyways, that's enough of my Apple fanboyism showing through.

The best tip I can offer a Mint newbie is to make the most out of Gnome-Do (Windows key + Spacebar, then type something in). Make sure you have all the plugins installed by clicking on the little arrow in the top right and going into the preferences. Urm, at least I think you can do that with the gnome-do installed in Mint. I personally use Do that much that I added the gnome-do repo so I always have the latest version. Once you get used to it you will find yourself never using the Mint Menu again. (Gnome-do is based on a Mac app btw)

[belovedmonster]

Yup, I noticed the firefox bookmark problem as well when I first installed Mint 5, that's why I installed the newest version from the gnome-do repos. With the newest version and all the plugins, trust me, its the best thing since sliced bread. The version that ships in Mint 5 is a bit clunky.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GnomeDo/Installation

[belovedmonster]

With the up to date version you shouldn't need to write more than two or three letters to get what you want most of the time, and it don't come up with dumb stuff like firefox bookmarks unless you write that. The version in Mint 5 is 0.4 I believe, the current version is 0.6. Makes all the difference

[belovedmonster]

But omg that firefox bookmark thing is still happening! lame

Weird. You are clearly cursed. Try typing firefox as per usual, then click the down key to pick the actual Firefox Run command you need. Maybe if you do that a couple of times it will "learn" what you want Firefox to mean in the same way The Awesome bar learns your habits in Firefox.

It should just be working without any farting around though. Maybe if you log out and log back in again that will fix it, it does most things.

[belovedmonster]

Now you have the latest version of Do working, go into its preferences and add any plugins that sound useful. With the plugins you can do everything from check your gmail to play a certain album on Rhythmbox just by typing in the title. Even some basic stuff like shutting down and logging out is not supported by default until you turn on the appropriate plugin.

[belovedmonster]

This is because the old version 0.4 handled plugins differently, they had to be added manually say through synaptic, rather than installing them from within gnome-do. Version 0.5 changed it up massively where plug ins where concerned. You can read about it here if you care: http://blog.davebsd.com/2008/06/09/gnome-do-05/ (This link also gives you some examples of gnome-do features you might not be aware of)

To turn the shutdown feature back on, just go into the plugin manager and select the appropriate one.

[piratesmack]

This is also in KDE, you can enable it in the Konquerer settings.